The United States' two largest television retailers urged a US trade panel on Thursday to block anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made color TVs that the Bush administration plans to impose in June.
Kevin O'Connor, a vice president in charge of home entertainment products for Wal-Mart, said the Chinese televisions serve a low-end segment of the US market that domestic producers are not interested in supplying.
"We believe that these TVs do not compete with domestically produced colour televisions and have not had any adverse affect on the domestic colour TV producers," O'Connor told the US International Trade Commission.
The Bush administration plans to impose anti-dumping duties of up to 78.45 percent on more than $276 million of 21-inch (53-cm) screen and larger color televisions from China in a case brought by Five Rivers Electronic Innovations, a Greeneville, Tennessee, company that makes Philips and Samsung TVs, and a number of television worker unions.
The commission must make a final determination that the imports have materially damaged, or threaten to materially damage, the domestic industry for the duties to take effect. It will vote on that issue near the end of May.
O'Connor said Wal-Mart purchased a large volume of Chinese TVs in 2003 primarily for its "Thanksgiving Blitz" - a one-day sale where it offers low-end TVs at rock-bottom prices to bring customers into its stores at the start of the holiday season.
Domestic manufacturers, including Five Rivers, have shown no interest in supplying TVs for the sale, he said.
Bill Cody, vice president for Best Buy Co, the No. 2 television retailer after Wal-Mart, said his company stocked Chinese-made TVs year round under the brand name Apex.
The Chinese sets do not steal sales from domestic producers, who are "focusing on higher-tech, value-added products that are the future of the TV industry and not the bottom end of the market," Cody said.
If anti-dumping duties are imposed, low-end televisions "from other countries will simply replace Chinese imports in the US market," he said.
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